Realistic Paintings by David Jon Kassan

David Jon Kassan (Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1977) is a contemporary American painter best known for his life-size realist portraits. The paintings combine figurative subjects with abstract backgrounds or “tromp l’oeil texture studies,” reportedly inspired by Franz Kline and Robert Rauschenberg. Of this dual representation strategy Kassan notes, “my effort to constantly learn to document reality with a naturalistic, representational painting technique allows for pieces to be inherent contradictions; paintings that are both real and abstract.”

Kassan currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches painting classes and workshops at various institutions around the world.

David Kassan received his B.F.A. in 1999 from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. He continued his studies at The National Academy, and the Art Students League of New York, both in Manhattan, and won awards for his paintings from the Portrait Society of America, the Art Students League of New York, the Society of Illustrators, and Communications Arts magazine.

He has also won the Newington-Cropsy Foundation’s Travel Grant, which allowed him to travel, study and sketch in Italy in the summer of 2003. There he conducted sketch studies of various masterworks, which are source of inspiration to his own work.

Kassan also cites a number of other varied influences, including the “sheer conceptual and executed realism” of Caravaggio and American realists, in particular John Sloan of the Ashcan School.

Kassan has studied human anatomy extensively, reflecting a scientific understanding of the muscular structures beneath the skin. Kassan has written extensively on the subject and its relation to conveying emotion, including publishing an “Artist’s Guide to Portrait Anatomicae” and several articles on the topic for magazines such as Artist Daily. His technique of creating layered application of pigments has been hailed by critics as creating a highly realistic impression of skin and flesh.